Salvatore Mancuso will remain in La Picota prison in Bogotá. The former paramilitary leader landed in Colombia a month and a half ago and, from the first minute, claimed that he had the right to conditional freedom. After 15 years in a United States prison, he considered that he had already served his mandatory sentences there in the transitional justice process known as Justice and Peace. However, a judge denied his request on March 13, alleging that he still had 33 security measures. In an exceptional turn in transitional justice, another court, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), decided to take Mancuso's legal case to its offices and reevaluate the request for freedom. The former paramilitary's hope was renewed. If this last court considered that it was possible for him to contribute to the truth about the conflict from freedom, he could leave La Picota. But it was not like that.
“The requested temporary, conditional and anticipated freedom will not be granted,” the JEP ruling, signed by the chamber for defining legal situations, clearly states, explaining that it must take into consideration “the revocation of freedom related to at least 2,600 events that take place in Justice and Peace, as well as the decisions on his freedom adopted by this court.” Mancuso had also asked for freedom to be a peace manager in the Government of Gustavo Petro – an offer that was made to him by the Presidency and that, when detained, will continue to be truncated. His freedom is not an automatic right but is conditioned to the process of trust that he builds by providing the truth to the victims, the JEP explains to the former paramilitary commander about the decision.
So that process of truth and trust has to move forward. Just a few days before, the JEP called Mancuso to give his version of two massacres committed by paramilitary groups in alliance with the public force, known as the El Aro and La Granja massacres. Both occurred during the nineties, in the department of Antioquia, when former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez was the governor. The former president extradited Mancuso in 2008 and disqualifies the truthful contributions of the former paramilitary because he considers that he only seeks revenge for this extradition. Mancuso, the JEP requests, must also provide the truth about the Convivir, alliances of livestock businessmen with paramilitary groups that occurred in Antioquia in the nineties.
Mancuso, however, continues to consider that he should contribute this truth from freedom. “There are no factual or legal justifications that justify his current detention,” the former commander's defense responded to the JEP's decision, alleging again that the former paramilitary already complied with the Justice and Peace sentences. “We call for an urgent review of his case to resolve this legal paradox that affects not only Mancuso but the peace process itself, since he has not been granted the necessary legal guarantees,” he added.
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